civilisationReview

  SPEAKING in Tongues? _______ I was hanging out with an ole 1980s (English-speaking Indian) friend of mine - who's still holding on, quite successfully i must add, to that elusive thing called 'style'.....which is quite a feat these fashionable but style-less days - and he was mentioning a chinese catholic woman friend of his who is quite into this 'speaking in tongues' thing that, from what i learnt from him, is becoming quite the rage amongst quite a few catholics these days here.   My first response was, "man, these people, (and their chinese archbishop even) support and revere racist and fascist leaders and governments, can't be bothered about other races and cultures, or learning their languages, and they want to move on to speaking heavenly languages?  Ask them learn terrestrial ones first."  My friend, being Indian, understood the joke and laughed.  Indians from the 80s, being more Indian and multicultural, were quite a witty lot.....till many ...

Don :   Jesus was of Jewish descent, not black, hispanic, anglo, or American indian descent. ed :  Jesus was of Heavenly Descent, and one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Hence, He isn't particularly or exclusively a Jew. And since All of us are made in the Image of God, all of us represent the Image of God. ed X

With his song, Imagine, John Lennon successfully got generations to downplay the significance of religion, heaven, and replace it with the corporation, the whims and fancies of these millionaire celebs, like himself, as the final arbiters of truth. Putting it really simply, 'no heaven' focuses one on 'here and now'. 'No religion' disables moral questionings, and subjects moral evolution to the capitalist-corporate-celeb-led apetites.  And this would be especially the case in a highly-sexualised, celeb-worshipping, and capitalist elite-led environment like the west was, and is grossly so today. All that is left is the corporation and celeb as moral, spiritual and intellectual beacons.  What you get at the end is an imagination free of thought and perpective that opposes the will of the corporation and the media.  It is actually quite a tricky constellation for the untrained eye to interconnect and decipher.  But it's there for those who truly prize their ind...

P erhaps Jesus had to come in the form of a Jew to continue the theological, philosophical, and prophetic line of the Judaic faith through another religion. He didn't want the faith to be confined to the Jews in the eyes of others. And Jesus was quite annoyed with the Pharisees and the 'Rabbis' as well, as seen here, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!" "Jer...

"They call her Santa Muerte (‘Holy Death’ or ‘Saint Death’), but she’s no saint. Literally. The skeletal female figure has a growing devotion in Mexico, Central America, and some places in the United States, but don’t be fooled by the Mary-like veil or the holy-sounding name. She’s not a recognized saint by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, in 2013, a Vatican official condemned devotion to her, equating it to “the celebration of devastation and of hell.” “It’s not every day that a folk saint is actually condemned at the highest levels of the Vatican,” Andrew Chesnut, a Santa Muerte expert who has been studying the devotion for more than eight years, told CNA. Chesnut is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of "Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint," the only English academic book to date on the subject. Despite her condemnation from on high, Santa Muerte remains increasingly popular among cr...

I 'm a Catholic.  (Not a 'Roman' Catholic though, as i do not recognise white and western hegemony over the idea of 'God'.)  So what do i think of this observance by Catholics, or at least a good number of them (i hope)? Well yes.  It is important, especially when interned within capitalist, hedonistic, consumeristic socioeconomic conditions that constantly focuses one on self-interest at the expense of another.  So it is important that one partakes in this weekly 'spiritual spa-like detoxification and exfoliation'.  It's not that fish does wonders for the soul.  But abstinence, within a satanic secular climate where indulgence and reaction is promoted, through the consumption of fish, might help the scales fall from one's eyes. But, of course, it doesn't work if you're going to douse your fishy with a 1000 and half Island archipelago of a dressing, complemented by a nice bottle of wine from Tescos, and a box and a half of After-8s.  There ha...

The degeneration of the church as witnessed in the ongoing sexual abuse discoveries within the Catholic church is in significant part, a consequence of the overarching sexual revolution in the west;  the growth of eurofeminism's assertion that women aren't free till they're free to be as debauched as the worse amongst men;  the Consumerist Revolution in the west finally leading to Sexual Consumerism and the LGBTQ movement; and the juvenilisation of the market with the young serving as the main force determining media and cultural development, and it serving to enhance the tendency toward immediate gratification and via shallow and debased means. These phenomena shows an all round acceptance, celebration, and promotion of sexual promiscuity and depravity in western society. In fact, the LGBTQ movement actually expects the Church to serve as a contraceptive to protect them from feelings of moral conflict. However, it has reached a point that they demand it, not due to moral...

Stating that the absence of a rational explanation for something is proof that it isn't true, is like determining that the ocean is a metre deep because my ruler has a maximum of a 100 centimetres. The tools of scientific analysis by the west can only measure that part of reality that their particular historical experience has given them the sense to discern. Just because it works some of the time, doesn't mean it works all of the time, and especially when their particular historical experience has itself curtailed their understanding of 'all'. All tools are invented by a particular History, nourished by all the experiences it contains, and impoverished by all that it doesn't.  The 'reality' of the partial historical development of the west, determines the degree to which their tools of discerning reality is impartial. All tools are invented by a particular History, nourished by all the experiences it contains, and impoverished by all that it doesn't. T...

"According to Vatican officials, there are no current plans to allow a change in the bread that is used as matter for the Eucharist. Controversy was afoot after 80-year-old Father Francisco Taborda, S.J., a Brazilian theologian, said in February while attending a seminar in Rome that a watershed debate regarding the Eucharist was a probable topic at the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian region in October. Fr. Taborda suggested that wheaten bread could be substituted with yuca, a root common in Latin America in use as a staple food. Also known as manioc or cassava, it is the source of tapioca. The Catholic Church regards wheaten bread and wine as the only suitable matter to be used as species for confecting the Eucharist, the central mystery of the Catholic faith. Fr. Taborda told Crux last month that environmental conditions in the hot and damp climate of the Amazon make communion wafers unsuitably moist. Suggesting a departure from the norm inherited from the Gospel, the Jes...

"One of the main contributions of the Second Vatican Council was precisely seeking a way to overcome this divorce between theology and pastoral care, between faith and life. I dare say that the Council has revolutionized to some extent the status of theology – the believer’s way of doing and thinking. The theologian who is satisfied with his complete and conclusive thought is mediocre. The good theologian and philosopher has an open, that is, an incomplete, thought, always open to the maius [greaterness] of God and of the truth, always in development,” Francis wrote in Veritatis Gaudium." - cna   T his, is only part of the story. Given that whatever the Vatican thinks comes from their experience within western history, it will endow them with particular ways of looking at things and discerning reality. We can learn from that certainly. However, there is more parts to the story that will remain untold till the rest of us appreciate Christianity with our cultural and historical...

Makavelli  (on facebook) : We are all humans until... Race disconnected us, Religion separated us, Politics divided us, And wealth classified us. ed : Race didn't disconnect us, it gave us the opportunity to have different experiences and share it. Religion didn't separate us, it gave us different ideas that, when joined, forms a beautiful whole. Politics didn't divide us, it just distinguished between the ignorant or self-abosorbed and those who weren't. Wealth didn't classify us, its disproportionate distribution did. It is not in avoiding the above that we become human, but in realising and resolving it.  Navigate wisely and with empathy through such division, and it will deliver your multiplication. e X

"Every time Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed, they affirm their belief in what will happen to them after death: “'I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”   The belief in the resurrection of one’s physical body at the end of time is central to Christian theology, and finds its basis in the resurrection of Christ, who rose in body and soul three days after his passion and death.   But according to a recent Pew survey, 29 percent of Christians in the US hold the New Age belief of reincarnation - the belief that when one’s body dies, one’s soul lives on in a new and different body, unrelated to the first." - CNA W e Christians, in the non-white world, must realise that the evolution of 'Christianity' is tied with the evolution of the western/white mind. It is tied with their political machinations, elitism, and also their violent and colonial exploits. It is tied with their cultural inbreeding, their ignorance of other cultures and perspe...

The division of India into India and Pakistan simply served to amplify the differences between the Muslims and Hindus. Yes, there were tensions between the two sectors that was accentuated by British colonial policies of 'divide and conquer/rule', but these tensions DO predate British incursion into Bharat ('India'). Much of these tensions, we have to admit, was due to Muslim intolerance of difference in the historical 'Mughal' past. They did, historically speaking, demolish temples, and even line the steps of some mosques with the debris of said demolished temples to claim ascendence over the Hindus. Over time, there was integration, and Muslim assimilation into the Indian multicultural view of things, as laudably illustrated in the Taj Mahal being a national symbol of Bharat. And this multicultural character of India is also further illustrated by the Dharma Chakra on the Flag of India, popularised by Buddhism, but which is also a part of Hinduism and Jain...

We need to distinguish between EuroSocialism and Socialism. In Eurosocialism, there is an avowed belief that culture is formed by economic development.  And hence, they attempt to take control of human evolution through control of the economic milieu. Whilst that is in part true, we have to realise that culture is not thoroughly formed in the west as it might in other parts of the world like India and China. European socialism is more 'technical'.  It deals with the body, not the mind or spirit. In these parts, culture, rather than 'being formed' by economic development, can instead be used to interpret economic development or even challenge it, like Buddhism did more than 2000 years ago in the face of the growth of the capitalist tendency in parts of India, or Sannyasins (wandering ascetics) did in the past, and to a smaller degree, in the present. One could even state plausibly that Buddhism was the world's first Socialist movement. Even Japan had to get rid of B...

This book of psalms has an £18m price tag, which could make it the world's most expensive book when it's auctioned on Tuesday in New York. Pretty good, considering it is riddled with punctuation and spelling mistakes. bbc (following discussion from BBC Facebook )
 Lord-Jon Trumpington : It's also riddled with lies and superstition of course. Dave Hunter : Is this the most expensive work of fiction ever? Steve Pugsley : Will it be sold in the fairy story book, part of the sale. David Jones : "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental." Ed :  Ahhh....i see the heathens are out in force - in condemning religion. They'd rather hang on to the epistles of celebs, royalty, oprah, tycoons, and sportstars. Pay them no mind. They have to discount such beauty and truths as contained within scriptures of all religions so that they can feel justified cheering for Beckh...